Ex Hex: A No Frills Power Trio

Part of the appeal of "Rips," the debut album by all-female power trio Ex Hex, is what you won't hear.

No weird synthesizers or strings, just guitar, bass, drums and vocals. No droopy ballads. None of the songs, written by guitarist/singer Mary Timony (Helium, Wild Flag) and bassist Betsy Wright (Childballads), make it to the four-minute mark ("War Paint" comes close). Songs are all three- or four-chord stompers, with inventive, interlocking patterns and economical melodies, delivered with plain-spoken directness, and grooves are played straight by formidable drummer Laura Harris (Benjy Ferree), without excess swing or gratuitous fills. Tempos range from fast to faster, and only one song — the last one, fittingly titled "Outro" — is in triple meter. You can blast through "Rips" in a little over a half-hour, which makes it ideal for great repeat listening.

The three D.C.-area musicians have known (or known of) each other for some time. "D.C. is a little bit of a small town, if you play music," Wright said. "It's not a music town necessarily." Harris worked at indie music venue Black Cat, where Wright hung out; Wright met Mary at a show and discovered they had mutual friends. A little more than a year ago, after Wild Flag, a group that also included Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney, broke up, Timony demoed songs with Harris; in July, they sent them to Wright, the only member not living in D.C. at the time.

"She had heard through one of our friends that I was going to be moving back to D.C.," Wright said. "She'd put out the word that they were looking for someone, and someone suggested me… We were friends on Facebook, so we started talking about it on Facebook."

Wright, already a fan of Timony's, was floored when she heard the demos. "I was like, 'This is the kind of music I want to play: raw rock and roll, simple, but with these awesome guitar riffs," Wright said. "Everything was just raw power. I'd been getting way more into that approach to music. I've been into music for so long and had gone through so much different stuff, from jazz and classical to everything. The last couple of years I've been super-into punk rock. It just really resonated with me."

The trio wasted little time from there, recording drums for three days in North Carolina, then three weeks of adding guitars, bass and vocals at Timony's studio. "Rips" was mixed by Detroit producer/musician Bobby Harlow (Conspiracy of Owls, the Go), who "really put his signature on the album," Wright said. "He's responsible for a big part of the sound. We had a lot of good people working with us, which made it easier. But we did have a very specific idea of what we wanted it to sound like from the beginning, which made it also harder. We wanted it to be perfect. We weren't satisfied if there was a note out of place."

Ex Hex was also careful not to add too many layers, and Harlow kept the recordings lean by stripping back extraneous overdubs. "We didn't want to overdo it, and simplicity is part of it," Wright said. "Live, we do sound similar to the record. There wasn't a lot of extra stuff on there that we can't reproduce."

Ex Hex plays the Space in Hamden on Friday, Oct. 31, with Speedy Ortiz, Ovlov and loom. The main attraction, Wright said, remains just how fun the music sounds.

"That's kinda just where we're at," Wright said. "We want to play music that's fun to listen to and fun to dance to."